Thou shalt not discriminate

A few years ago – it was roughly the time of the divorce referendum campaign – I found myself engaged in conversation with a group of (mostly) strangers at a private party. One of them, a woman in her early 30s, was talking about her experience applying for a teaching position at a Church school. I won’t mention names – neither hers, nor the school’s, nor even the subject she intended to teach. Suffice it to say that it was not ‘Religious Studies’ (for argument’s sake, let’s pretend it was Geography... I’d like to think that the geography of Planet Earth remains what it is, whatever the private religious beliefs of the person teaching it). 

In any case, she didn’t get the job... and according to her, the reason given was that she was separated from her husband, and living with another man. As the interviewer put it to her in person: her lifestyle ‘did not conform to the school’s ethos’. 

Several analogous cases had already surfaced in the course of the referendum campaign... this was partly why we were even discussing it at the time. In fact, the referendum itself had a direct bearing on that woman’s situation: divorce being unavailable, she could not marry her partner and ‘regularise’ her position. Even if she could, it is debatable whether it would have improved her chances of employment. She would still be a ‘divorcee’, and as such – by some bizarre form of logic only taught in Catholic schools – unsuitable for the position of Geography teacher. 

At one point I asked her why she didn’t go public with the story. It was then she realised she was talking to a journalist... and while ‘panic’ might not be the right word to describe her reaction, it was nonetheless clear that she was alarmed that I might choose to write about it myself. (She had no cause, as I can’t just repeat everything I hear in private conversations without asking permission first. But that is largely irrelevant).   

She was worried on two specific counts: one, that exposure of the details might affect her ability to land a job as a teacher in any other school in Malta... seeing as they all share roughly the same ‘ethos’, whether owned by the Church or not... and two, that her young children might be identified and suffer some form of consequence as a result. 

Who am I to argue against that? I don’t have school-aged children who might be affected by my public pronouncements on any topic. And I shall have to confess that, until that moment, I was largely incapable of ever seeing things from the perspective of anyone who does. When I thought about it for the grand total of two seconds, I realised that she was perfectly right. The only responsible adult thing she could do under those circumstances was grin and bear the injustice, for the sake of her children. Everyone else in the conversation agreed, too.

I haven’t changed my own opinion since then; but I can now see that this collective acquiescence is itself a large part of the problem. It makes us all accomplices to what is effectively a very ugly form of social bullying. Nor was this an isolated case: MUT president Kevin Bonello revealed last year that another woman had been accepted as headmistress at a church school, but was later turned down when the school discovered she was married to a non-Catholic. 

Please note: she was refused an administrative post in a Church school, not because of her own religious convictions... but because of her husband’s beliefs. 

Meanwhile, in 2014 MaltaToday published an internal Curia document entitled ‘Practising Catholic As A Requirement For Eligibility And Selection Of Staff In Church Schools’. Fairly self-explanatory: the idea was to forge new terms of employment to guarantee that head teachers and other staff would all be “practising Catholics” – or face disciplinary action if their “life choices give scandal or run counter to the ethos of the school”.

The decision, it was reported, “could close the door to the employment of divorced teachers, gay teachers, or even single parents who have had children out of wedlock, or parents of IVF children, if these ‘substantive life choices’ are not in line with Catholic teaching. Leaving aside all the obvious legal problems with that policy for a second...  there’s also an unmistakable flavour of voyeurism in the mix. How, pray tell, do the prospective employers intend to determine the existence of such ‘substantive life choices’... if not by prying directly into other people’s private affairs? 

More to the point: how can any of this even be legal in an EU member state? Well, the answer to that one is simple enough. It isn’t. In fact, you don’t even need to bring European legislation into the equation. Malta’s very own Employment and Industrial Relations Act outlaws discrimination in the hiring process... and it even defines “discriminatory treatment” as “any distinction, exclusion, or restriction which is not justifiable in a democratic society, including discrimination made on the basis of marital status, pregnancy or potential pregnancy, sex, colour, disability, religious conviction, political opinion or membership in a trade union or in an employers’ association.”

To me, that seems every bit as straightforward as the Curia’s declared employment practices. It is illegal to deny employment on the basis that one is not a ‘practising Catholic’, or because of lifestyles that reflect non-Catholic beliefs or attitudes. And the Employment and Industrial Relations Act applies equally to all Malta’s employers... there is no exemption on the basis of religion. Actually, there can’t be... because that, too, would be an obvious case of ‘discriminatory treatment’.

All of which raises the question: why is this blatantly illegal situation tolerated in Malta? And why do we need yet another law to specifically prohibit such practices, when they are already very clearly illegal?

I have no idea, but – bizarrely – that is what is actually happening. Rather than just enforce existing legislation, and take legal action against Church schools (or anyone else, for that matter) which resort to illegal employment methods... the government is going ahead with a whole new law: actually, two. Civil Liberties Minister Helena Dalli has just tabled two equality bills in the House... which she described as “the jewels in the crowns of other equality legislations passed by the Labour government.”

Hmmm. Far be it from me to lessen the lustre of such dazzling gems; but if not even the Employment and Industrial Relations Act was ever applied to Church Schools all these years... what makes Dalli so certain her precious new laws will not end up suffering the same fate? All it would take to correct this injustice is to enforce the law as it stands. It is something that already happens in the case of other employers; new cases are brought before the Industrial Relations Tribunals each week. Yet for some obscure reason, the authorities seem to prefer enacting new laws than applying the old ones. Why?

In this particular case, our failure to enforce even the most basic of our own employment and anti-discrimination laws is doubly anomalous.  Church schools are subject to a 1993 Church-State concordat signed by former President (and Education Minister) Ugo Mifsud Bonnici. Without going into too much detail, Article 6.2 (c) establishes the salary structures in Church schools... apportioning the financial obligation to both Church and State. 

The way it pans out in practice is that the State – i.e., the Maltese taxpayer, regardless of religious or any other belief – funds anywhere between 70 and 100% of teaching staff salaries in Church Schools. This changes the landscape considerably... suddenly, ‘the employer’ in that scenario is not the Church at all. It is the State. 

At this point, it is actually irrelevant whether the Catholic Church feels entitled to discriminate against prospective employees on religious grounds, in clear defiance of Maltese and international law. The State is the one actually footing the bill, and as the old maxim goes: he who pays the piper, calls the tune. So if the Church wants to insist on pursuing discriminatory policies in the name of some kind of ‘ethos’... it should at least have the decency to pay for that ethos itself. 

After all, it would spare the national exchequer only some 75 million a year... and I’m sure the money could be spent on better things, than sponsoring religious discrimination in schools.